Gingrich offers no apologies for ad

The former House speaker and, beginning Wednesday, GOP presidential candidate, has spent the past three years defending his decision to appear alongside Nancy Pelosi in a commercial for Al Gore's Repower America Campaign.

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In the ad, Gingrich sits alongside Pelosi on a couch outside the Capitol and declares that while they don't agree on many issues, "we do agree our country must take action to address climate change."

Gingrich has had plenty of practice responding to complaints about the commercial from the likes of Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, who argued on his radio show that the former Georgia congressman had been aiding the "enemy."

"I'd do a commercial with Al Gore," Gingrich said last May in an interview with the website Human Events. "My point is conservatives ought to be prepared to stand on the same stage and offer a conservative solution."

As Gingrich formally enters the presidential nomination battle on Wednesday, he can expect to be peppered with still more questions about his advocacy on an issue that’s unlikely to go over so well with GOP primary voters.

Pawlenty has been on an apology tour for his own work on climate change, which includes signing a law as Minnesota governor to cap the state’s greenhouse gases and for taping a radio ad for the Environmental Defense Fund urging action at the federal level.

During the first GOP presidential debate last week, moderators played the audio of the radio ad. “Do we have to?” Pawlenty joked before giving his now finely tuned response: “I made a mistake. Nobody’s perfect.”

As a longtime GOP power broker, Gingrich brings his own lengthy record on green issues to the presidential campaign.

He’s called himself a "green conservative” and co-authored the 2007 book “A Contract with the Earth” about how the political right has a history of being strong environmental stewards.

But Gingrich also has a history of sparring with greens. As speaker of the House in the mid-1990s, Gingrich fought the Clinton administration over a series of anti-environmental riders that Republicans tried to attach to spending bills.

More recently, he’s said he questioned global warming science and slammed Democrats and the Obama administration for pursuing cap-and-trade legislation. And he’s been promoting his plan to replace the EPA with an "Environmental Solutions Agency."

Conservatives continue to wrestle with their GOP presidential field and past advocacy on the climate issue, from Gingrich and Pawlenty to Mike Huckabee’s endorsement of cap-and-trade legislation during the 2008 campaign.

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), a leading skeptic on climate science, said last fall that the Republican White House contenders had been soft on the issue and he noted specifically Gingrich’s ad with Pelosi.

"I know he'd just assume people forget that, but at that point it appeared that side was going to win," Inhofe said.

Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist told POLITICO on Monday that he won’t single Gingrich out for his work on climate change.

"If he was the only guy who walked down the alley with bad people, that shows bad judgment,” he said. But Norquist quickly added, "So many did that."

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 2:40 p.m. on May 9, 2011.